


With The Ripp'd Up Queens & Knaves

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is the president of the school's unofficial LARPing club, that sees the inductee of a new member in Castiel Milton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With The Ripp'd Up Queens & Knaves

**Author's Note:**

> based off of [this prompt](http://oswinne.tumblr.com/post/41973263084/if-someone-writes-a-spn-high-school-au-with-dean) on tumblr.

  
At first, it wasn't so much of a _club_ as a thing to do on lunch hours when they didn't have homework to finish at the last minute (and sometimes even when they did, if they were feeling particularly indifferent about their next period). And at first, it was pretty much just Dean and Charlie, fucking around in the park behind school instead of in the woods behind Charlie's house after it. Soon enough, however, word spread among their fellow students, and with the added company of Jo, Anna, and Benny (Dean could only sometimes convince Sammy to come, when he wasn't blushingly running off to a study group instead that Dean was sure also involved a girl who's name Dean sometimes spied scribbled in Sam's notes), it'd actually became some kind of viable extracurricular.

And it was fucking _awesome_.

Of course, to some extent they were still the joke of the school, but none of them could ever quite find it in themselves to care when they got to pretend to be knights and queens for an hour before being trapped back in a classroom where their teacher would recite Shakespeare in the most appallingly monotone voice. Outside, they actually got to  _play_ it, if they wanted. It was a good routine they had cultivated, and it was a peaceful escape maintained with ease. 

That was, until a stranger entered their midst.

Okay, so he wasn't exactly a _stranger_ , as Dean was pretty sure everyone in the school knew the name of Castiel Milton. Anna most of all, perhaps, seeing as he was her brother. Now, Dean never had anything _against_ the guy, per se, but as far as he knew, the dude was a pretentious asshole who only ever hung out with that stupid group of people who moved about the school as if they were better than everyone, and he thanked the LARPing gods every day that Anna had defected from it. There was just something about him, maybe it was the way he stared or the way his shoulders were always so squarely set (and of course Dean had noticed these things with every detail--there were few other things to pay attention to in Biology, okay), that put Dean on edge.

"What were you _thinking_ ," Dean hissed as he pulled Anna aside.

Anna rolled her eyes. "He's cool, Dean, and he wanted to come."

Dean could only raise his eyebrow at that.

"Okay, _I_ wanted him to come," Anna conceded, glancing back at her brother who was currently being placed under scrutiny by Jo, as she showed him their array of costumes they had cobbled together (that is, stolen from the drama department). "But this is totally his thing, trust me."

Dean was still eternally doubtful--as if _Castiel Milton_ would willingly condescend to this--but sighed in resignation, and promised that for Anna, he'd at least try.

That didn't mean he had to _like_ it, however.

He strode over to him ready to lay down the law. "So I don't know how much Anna told you, but this is all serious shit to us, okay. You're either in it or you're out, there's no half-assing," Dean said firmly, with a slight tone of thinly veiled agression. 

"Yes, I imagine teenagers dressing up in medieval costumes running around a park is all very seriouss indeed," Castiel responded unmoved, gaze unrelenting and assesing. Dean bristled.

"Well you don't have to be here if you don't want to," Dean offered defensively, hoping he'd take the out.

Castiel glanced briefly to his sister. "I want to," is all he replied, as he flicked his eyes back to meet Dean's with a determined stare.

"Suit yourself," Dean shrugged with feigned ease, "and suit up," he said, throwing a spare tunic at the boy's head. That day's game was supposed to see the beginning of a new quest, so he would be put through his paces quick enough, and Dean entertained smugly that quick enough that popular prick personality would crumble beneath the strain.

He kind of thought wrong, though.

It turned out, as Anna tried her hardest not to laugh in Dean's face, and as the rest of the group stared on in awe, that Castiel was a fucking amazing LARPer.

Maybe it was just something about his strong and imperious voice that matched the archaic cadence of speech they liked to indulge in, or maybe it was just that he was an amazing actor, either way, Castiel came into their made-up world of Moondor was an impressive presence. By the end of the lunch hour, Dean was internally debating whether Castiel was the coolest person alive, or just as fucking awkward as all of them. 

He concluded in order to be the former, he must have to be a little of both. 

"You gonna come back again tomorrow?" Dean tried to ask as nonchalantly as possible. By the small smile that then peaked at the corner of Cas' mouth, he thought he might have failed a bit on that count.

"If I'm welcome to."

Dean fiddled with the his backpack on the ground without looking Castiel in the eye. How do you ask someone to stay without actually asking them to stay? "I mean, if you want to..." he trailed off. Jesus, he wasn't going to _say_ it.

Castiel's smile grew full-fledged, still slightly breathless, and if that alone wasn't worth the whole embarrassment, Dean didn't know what was. "I'd like it," he said simply.

Dean hefted his bag onto his back, and gave up suppressing his own grin. "Good, well, we'd rather have you than not. It's better with numbers, you know?" he explained evasively, but again, Castiel seemed to effortlessly see straight through it. Dean was not entirely sure if that was really troubling or actually a relief.

He joined Dean in his steady pace back towards the steps of the school. "Of course," was all he said.

And if that day Dean finally admitted to himself he _maybe_ had a little bit of a crush on Castiel Milton, well, he would never admit it. Of course.

 

***

 

Castiel's regular addition to the group went over surprisingly smoothly. He got on with everyone as swimmingly well the second time as he had the first, and for a whole month of lunches held in the imagined wild forests and moat circled castles of Moondoor after that, nothing seemed very different at all.

It hadn't even _felt_ very different, at least to begin with, as strange an occurrence it was for Dean to make a new friend so quickly. Despite their perhaps natural proclivity for conflict being from too opposing social circles, they worked together surprisingly well.

But something was changing. 

Because Dean--Dean didn't just _like_ Castiel, he was pretty fucking  _enamoured_  with him. It was to the point where he now sat behind him in biology and paid attention for the first time in ages i stead of just doing physics homework, just to hear that awfully attractive voice sound off the answers to the teacher's questions. Rather appropriately, Dean would then spend all of biology class thinking about anatomy--of course, in all manner of inappropriate contexts. But it was quiet, it was unrequited, and it interfered in no measure with their friendship, nor their alter egos in the game, so it was safe. 

Until, that was, the lunch hour that would go down in Moondorian legend as The Day Castiel Found Out.

It was actually far less dramatic than later recounting for Sam's and his mom's benefit made it seem, but as it was easily one of the more terrifying moments of Dean's young adult life, it seemed not hyperbolic at all to suppose it was the day everything changed, because really, it _was._

It started when their day's quest was rained out, which was perhaps a terrifying occurrence on its own because it no longer meant that Dean really had an excuse to hang around with Cas, which was generally still not all that normal of a thing unless they were combatting monsters and evil magicians in the woods of Queen Charlie's kingdom. Dean was working on it.

As they were hastily packing away their things before making a quick dash back to the shelter of the school, the rest of the group already ahead of them, Dean attempted an easy get away for Cas' benefit, to let himself down gently. "So, I guess we'll try again tomorrow, huh?" he asked Cas, trying his best to avoid fixating on the way Cas' fringe plastered to his wet forehead. He was definitely not thinking at _all_ about the way his shirt was plastered to his chest.

"You don't have some kind of contingency in place to continue for when weather forces you inside?" Cas inquired back, squinting through the haze of rain that was beginning to fall ever harder.

Dean frowned. "What, you mean like continue this indoors? That'd be a terrible idea, man, do you know how many looks we'd get? How many looks we _already_ get?"

Cas' returning look was accompanied by an amused half-smile. "You don't strike me as the kind of person who particularly cares about what others think about the things you truly care about."

"Yeah, but I care about what they think about my friends," Dean said fiercely, because he hates knowing people talk shit about their club behind their backs, and sometimes not behind their backs at all, as if Charlie isn't the coolest chick in this whole school, as if Benny wasn't the chillest and helpful brother in arms Dean had ever met. _And I care what I'll have made them think of you_ , he didn't say, hating the idea that he had somehow tainted Castiel.

"Many people have terrible taste in people," Cas provided sagely, voice serious and deep as ever.

"Speaking from experience, are we?" Dean laughed to cover up the clench in his chest. They were almost at the entrance steps, it was time for evasive manoeuvres. "Learned what a mistake it was hanging out with us?" 

But it was then that Castiel did something Dean had not expected, and at the steps of the school, Castiel laid a hand upon Dean's shoulder, the heat of it pressing through Dean's soaked shirt. " _Dean_ ," he begun, eyes earnest and full and so, so _Cas_ it ached. "I must inform you I actually have exquisite taste," he joked, and his mouth broke into a grin, and it was stupidly beautiful. In that moment, all Dean could think of was how much he loved the rain. "And you, perhaps," he said, still smiling in that crooked way of his, "were my best choice of all."

And that was it, something in Dean broke--or perhaps was put back together--and there was nothing functioning left in Dean's brain except the repeating and insistent thought to kiss him.

So he did.

He did and it was simultenoueasly nothing and everything like he'd imagined. In Dean's favourite fantasies, he hadn't imagined it would be this _wet_ for one, but it made Cas' lips taste like rain water, fresh and inviting, and more importantly more _real_ than any daydream could have conceived. Of course, is his dreams, he also imagined Cas enthusiastically kissing _back_.

As soon as Dean realised this, he pulled back abruptly, stepping away and letting Cas' perched hand on his shoulder fall off to sway idly against Cas' side.

'I--" he begun to stutter out an apology, but was struck dumb by the inscrutable look upon Cas' face.

"You kissed me," Cas stated, voice somewhat in awe, and more raw than Dean had heard it earlier.

"I'm sorry, man, I don't know what--"

"You stopped kissing me," Cas frowned, as if just realising this second sorry occurrence. 

Dean needed to get out of here _now_. "I shouldn't have done it in the first place, I'm really sorry. Look, we can just--come back tomorrow and pretend none of this ever happened. It's all part of the game right? We can invoke a memory spell or something," Dean rambled, refusing to look Cas in the eye. The cool rain running down his back was a lousy solace to the itching in his skin.

"I'd be sorry to forget it," Cas said all of a sudden, so sincerely in a way that didn't make sense at _all._

" _What?_ " Dean started, whipping his head back up.

"You're not very easily forgotten, Dean Winchester," he said as he leaned in to lay a quick kiss at the corner of Dean's frozen lips. "I'll see you in class," he whispered, and then left Dean standing shock still as he hurried up the steps.


End file.
